Covid Chronicles, part 2: All things new

Last week was Holy Week, and if there’s any week that a Christian is supposed to have ‘the feels’, it’s this week. But I had none of the feels. I tried listening to podcast sermons, tried praying contemplatively (as seems to be the trend now), tried feeling broken about the state of my soul and the world. But nothing. I just felt pretentious.   

So finally on Good Friday I watched The Passion of the Christ. I don’t think I’d watched it since college, but I figured if anything was going to get me into the right headspace for Easter, this would. Thankfully, I wept through most of it (my heart still beats!), but the moment that broke me most was when Jesus is carrying his cross to Golgotha and he stumbles. His mother runs to him, compelled by maternal instinct, and he turns to her and says, “Behold, I make all things new.” 

The thing about me is that I tend to have delayed emotional reactions to tragedy. For the duration of whatever is currently tragic, I feel emotionally detached from what’s happening and cerebral about what needs to be done. Feelings of grief or loss come later. Sometimes much later, sometimes never. And what the world is experiencing right now is tragic. Not only because of the high number of deaths that many countries are experiencing, but also because of the enormous number of people who are losing their sources of income, who are being forced to shelter-in-place in toxic and abusive home environments; it’s tragic because of the sharp uptick in usage that I imagine porn sights are experiencing, and the relational fallout from that breaks my heart.

I suppose it didn’t help that I spent the past two weeks listening to three different podcast series hosted by investigative journalists who followed and/or broke the stories on Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Cosby. How so much evil and depravity can exist in a single person is devastating to me. The earth is groaning, and not just from pollution. 

I desperately needed to hear Jesus say, “Behold, I make all things new.” 

This Covid19 season feels to me like a forced sabbath, like a forceful hit on the "pause" button. Humanity is exhausted, the earth is exhausted, the humanitarian community is exhausted, capitalism and globalization are exhausted. But no one was actually going to do anything to stop the reckless speed we’re moving at. Not really. I’ve never been a faithful observer of Lent (I tried to engage this year and failed miserably), but I can’t help thinking that Covid19 was interestingly timed with this Lenten season of collectively waiting for Jesus to make all things new by triumphing over darkness. I can’t help hoping that there’s something deeper at work here. 

It’s easy to see God making things new in the fact that families who have been too busy with work and school and hobbies to spend proper time together are now getting nothing but time together. It’s easy to see God making things new for a planet that has been ravaged by our lack of mindful stewardship. Now city birds are chirping, the skies are clear and creation is breathing a collective sigh of relief. It’s easy to believe that God is making things new within the systems of finance and commerce that have for too long been the driver of gross exploitation and inequitable practices. I sincerely hope the disruption results in our thinking differently about material wants and needs. 

That said, I’m having a harder time seeing how God is making things new in the lives of the countless people all over the world who are losing their sources of income, the millions of informally employed people who have no safety net to fall back on when their governments revoke their ability to make a living. It’s hard to see God making things new for those people who live with abusive partners or parents and who now have little recourse for escape. 

In just the last five to ten years, the lid has been ripped off for many of the powerful men who sexually preyed on women with impunity, and for many religious figures who have been caught out in the same sin. But for every instance in which a sexual predator is held to account, just as many cases are covered up. How and when is God going to make that new? 

To be clear, I don’t ask that question out of doubt, but out of impatience. I struggle with the fact that God is so patient with us. The longer He is patient, the more evil we commit and the more people fall through the cracks. It does not make natural sense to me. So I’m challenged by 2 Peter 3:9 where Peter says, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness [that’s me!]. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” It makes me think of Habakkuk’s heated discussion with God in which God responds, “The revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay.” (2:3)

God does not tarry. He has promised to make all things new. But this doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll make all tangible situations new right now. His work is more often than not conducted in the realm of the unseen and eternal. In the movie, Jesus says “I make all things new” when he’s walking towards his crucifixion, but in Scripture he says it at the end of the story, in Revelation 21:5. 

We haven’t yet reached the end of the story. 

Until we do, my hope is in this promise found in Zephaniah 3:

At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you; I will rescue the lame and gather those who have been scattered. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they were put to shame. At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.

The Covid Chronicles - Part 1

Wow guys. This will be an era for the history books, huh! 

I’m sitting in my living room. It’s Day 10 of Lebanese lockdown. Every day there’s news of another nation following suit. I’m working from home while blowing through my classical music album collection, drinking copious amounts of tea, reading reading reading, assembling a 1,000 piece puzzle, and generally just puttering around my apartment. 

But wait…isn’t that basically what I do most days? Being an introvert who lives alone, I practice self-isolation pretty regularly. Imagine my surprise to learn that this lifestyle is actually called 'self-quarantine'. Huh…

In addition to working from home and trying not to bake too much (since no one is around to eat the results except me), I’m trying to not let my mind descend into total Netflix lethargy. It’s hard though. I appreciate solitude, but two weeks of it is a bit much to be honest. I’m starting to get a little nutty.

Thankfully, I have a bird story to tell y’all. 

Because people are mostly staying put, the air quality in Beirut has been amazing. I spend a lot of time on my balcony just looking out over the blue Mediterranean and thinking gosh, the coronavirus may be decimating our economy, but it’s sure doing wonders for the environment. Anyway, because of all of this clean air, a relatively unusual phenomenon has surfaced in the form of birds hanging outside my terrace door. Yesterday morning, two of them were fluttering around, pecking at the window, and pooping all over my outdoor chairs (the audacity!). Every time I approached they’d fly away, only to return a few minutes later. Annoying, but whatever. The earth is happy. 

This morning, I woke up to a strange noise. I went into the guest bedroom (where my terrace door is) only to discover that one of yesterday’s birds had flown in through the crack and was flapping around in disoriented fashion. I’m a city girl, right, so I don’t always know what to do when undomesticated animals find their way into my house. I slid the door all the way open, thinking the bird would find its way out. But for some reason, this bird - who had found it fully doable to fly through the barely-big-enough crack between the sliding door and the wall - could not for the life of it find its way out through the now wide open doorway. Instead it flew into my bedroom where I rushed to open the balcony door, hoping it would find its way out there. But no, it smashed into the wall just above the door, then into my mirror on the opposite wall, then Ianded in the corner and stayed there for a bit. 

I approached very slowly and tried to pick it up (let’s face it, I’m just as scared of the bird as the bird is of me), but I didn’t get a good enough grip before the bird freaked out and flapped around some more, this time knocking itself out by rushing headlong into the mirror again. It landed on my dresser, breathing heavily and twitching a bit, its neck at a peculiar angle. So I picked it up and placed it outside on the terrace, hoping it wouldn’t die on me but also lacking the necessary bird resuscitation skills to prevent said death. (I’ll spare you the video version that shows it twitching as some of you are sensitive people and might experience trauma.) 

I returned to my bed, trying not to get neurotic about this bird possibly dying on my terrace. I peeked in on it a couple of times. At one point it had ended up on its back several inches away from where I’d placed it. Still breathing heavily. Still twitching. 

And I’m thinking to myself, Dear God, I really can’t handle a bird death right now. Too many emotions for the current situation. 

A couple of hours later I checked up on it again, and this time the bird was looking decidedly more put together, even though it was still on its back. I got closer, thinking I could try to turn it over so it would at least be on its feet. But before I could reach down, it miraculously flipped over and flew promptly away. 

So that’s that. The bird is alive, I’m alive; we're on our backs, we're breathing heavily, some of us are twitching. But we’re all going to survive this Covid-19 madness. Hang in there. 

Airplane confessions

I’ve lived in Lebanon for two and a half years and I love it. I really do. But I confess: I tend to have ungenerous thoughts toward Lebanese people when I’m with a large number of them on airplanes. 

It starts in the gate area. A certain slice of the Lebanese demographic have around 2.5 kids who are usually pacified by iPads while their botoxed mothers take selfies. For the other Lebanese demographic, the more the merrier, and at least four of their 7+ children are crying hysterically. Maybe because they wish they had iPads (in those moments, I certainly wish they did). 

When it’s time to board, I will be shamelessly cut in line. Generally, it’s the men who are guilty of this - maybe I look blonde and dumb - but the audacity! Next time, I’m going to shame them into orderly conduct by making a show of letting them go ahead of me. More than anything, the shame tactic generates results in this country. (Well, shame and bribes.) 

Always without fail, once we’re on the plane and busy finding our seats, a verbal spat will break out among passengers who didn’t look carefully at their boarding passes and mistook their seat numbers. Or they’ll try to rearrange the seating assignments so that their party of 12 can sit together. It takes two or three crew members to calm everyone down. 

During takeoff, the grandma next to me crosses herself, praying to Saint Charbel to postpone her meeting with God. Then she’ll turn to me and ask me the usual placement questions: 1) where are you from, 2) are you married, 3) why aren’t you married, 4) do you have a boyfriend, 5) why don’t you have a boyfriend. Then she’ll look at me, half perplexed, half pitying, and say, don’t worry, I’ll find you a good Lebanese boy to marry. I roll my eyes. 

Once we’re in the air and the food is being served, they’ll ask for things that aren’t on offer. Like anything other than what’s in the food cart. It takes forever for the frazzled attendant to get to me, and I’ll smile at him or her sympathetically and just ask for water, their relief palpable. 

Upon landing and taxiing, at least 15 people will get out of their seats and start rummaging in the overhead compartments, ignoring the cabin crew who are exasperatedly trying to get them to take a seat…since the plane is still moving. And inevitably, at least one bag will fall out of the compartment onto some unsuspecting person’s head. Probably mine (it’s happened more than once). 

But once we’re at the gate and we’re waiting for them to let us off, everyone will be laughing and talking to each other, exchanging well wishes on their return to the homeland. The atmosphere is warm and exuberant. And I’ll heave an internal sigh and tell myself to get over it. For as long as I live here, these are my people. And as exasperating as they can be on an airplane, they’re still completely lovable on the ground… Most of the time.  ; ) 

Middle age, love handles, and incandescent happiness

I turn 35 today, and my celebratory instinct was to hide myself away in the mountains over the weekend in the company of a like-minded friend. (But with a view like this, I feel vindicated against anyone who would criticize my anti-social life choices.)

Modern life expectancy notwithstanding, I feel I have officially reached middle age. For one, I’ve never been able to envision myself getting old, and also, I don’t have a retirement plan. So death at 70 would be convenient. I’m very practical.

I’m trying to process the fact that in a mere five years I will be forty when on most days I’m still trying to imagine what being a real adult with actual property and insurance policies must feel like. Also, I’ve never felt a strong desire to have children, but what if I suddenly start to? Even if I met someone tomorrow and got pregnant the next day, medically I’d be considered a geriatric mother. I don’t know how I feel about that. 

Also, thresholds are changing without my consent. For one, I’m getting grumpy. I have zero tolerance for people who don’t communicate, people who smoke their acrid cigars in the stairwell, people who text and walk (or operate motorized vehicles) without looking up, people who don’t parent their children properly (because I’m a parenting expert), and general poor taste, immature behavior, pettiness and nonsense. Who. has. got. the. time. I’m too busy thinking about cheese. 

Speaking of cheese, my love handles are out of control. I feel like my metabolism this year decided to go on strike. Like, it shows up to work, but then it just sits at its desk and does nothing all day. I exercise regularly and I eat the same way I’ve done for years (which is healthier than the average person), yet I continue to discover folds of skin that never used to be there. Do I resign myself to defeat and buy larger trousers, or do I stop eating all the things that make life worth living? 

Speaking of resignation and defeat, no matter how many self improvements I manage to achieve, some things are just never going to change. My habits and preferences are entrenched. For example, I will always and instinctively offer words and phrases to finish your sentences. I know this drives some people nuts (sorry, mom). I’d like to think it’s my way of showing you that I’m engaged with what you’re saying. (In fact, if I’m not finishing your sentences, I’m probably not listening to you.) Also, there is undeniably a superior way of doing the dishes and stacking them on the drying rack, and my way is the superior way. 

Despite this increase in crankiness and rigidity (or, in the case of my love handles, lack of rigidity), there is at least one awesome thing about getting older, and that is that life just keeps getting better. The quality of friendships, the travels, the challenges, the experiences, the overall random, joy-inspiring, delightfully unexpected moments that prove to me that Jesus freaking LOVES me… they just get better. 

Like today. Stephanie and I wandered around the beautiful town of Deir El Qamar and were on our way to the ancient mosque when we were stopped in our tracks by an elderly man who asked us if we had been by his wax museum. (In fact, we had just come from having avoided going in.) We felt we could not say no to this insistent old man, so we let him lead us right back. He asked his equally elderly, nearly toothless assistant to give us the tour (which he did with broken English and gusto), and then he had us sit down for a glass of wine (which was very good), and then he had us stay for lunch (which was also very good). 

Come to realize, this man is terribly wealthy and hails from a noble family dating back many centuries. He owns two palaces in town (one of which houses the wax museum), several other estates around Lebanon, and a house in Paris. He’s been decorated six times in both France and Lebanon, and he knows all of the political elite in the country. But he is wonderfully simple, generously hospitable, refreshingly unpretentious, and endearingly frank. In short, it was just another random, joy-inspiring, delightfully unexpected moment that makes life so good. 

As I sit here in my beautiful room and type the last sentences of this post, I feel deeply, incandescently happy. I’m not where I thought I would be at 35, but then again, where did I think I would be? 

“Traveler, there is no path; the path is made by walking.” ~ Antonio Machado 

Is my enneagram number the reason I’m still single?

So here’s the situation. I turn 35 in four months. I haven’t been in a relationship or even dated anyone in nine years, which, depending on your worldview, might seem really sad to you. But let’s pretend you’re not a Lebanese grandma. Or a Lebanese taxi driver. Or any Lebanese person for that matter. 

I’m going to say something that might possibly make me sound self-absorbed, but I don’t at all mean it that way: I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of rejection over the years, and I just do not understand why. I mean, I have my sh*t together, I’m reasonably attractive, I’m emotionally low maintenance (holler!), and while I very much enjoy the finer things in life, I’m used to paying for all of that myself. So why are the men making themselves scarce?

Is it because I’m also decisive and willful and honest? Is it because I don’t approach the negotiating table already having reduced my demands? Or is it because I’m not easily impressed or controlled? I swear, I must have a “bugger off” sign on my forehead that I did not put there.

I was absent when my work colleagues went through an Enneagram training in which they all took the test to identify their numbers. Apparently I didn’t need to be present to take the test, because basically everyone immediately identified me as an 8 (“the challenger”). I guess I’m not an enigma. 

I suppose I didn’t do myself any favors by moving to a Middle Eastern country in which men love blondes but not necessarily blondes who challenge them. When I first arrived, everyone told me to brace myself as I was sure to get lots of male attention. Two years on, I barely get side glances. Which honestly I’m okay with, because it must get really tiring after a while. Not that I would know. 

I’ve been on two dates in these two years. One with a man who is perfectly good and decent but not at all my type, and one with a guy who is entirely my type, but perhaps imperfectly good and decent. If you’re that second guy and you happen to be reading this, I’m still interested. I don’t want someone who is squeaky clean, just someone who is real and who won’t fall off his chair the moment I ask him a probing question. 

Also, please tell me you don’t live with your mother…

Enough.

Two more mass shootings in which a maladjusted young man takes up his gun and goes on a rampage because he’s angry about something. Just another day in America. Just another round of media outcry, political farce and societal theater. 

I’m going to say what basically every other country is thinking right now: America, we have forfeited the right to mourn mass shootings. 

Why? Because when it comes down to it, we simply refuse to change. These senseless tragedies keep happening and we keep feeling acute pain and sorrow - for about two minutes - and then we shrug our shoulders and move on. So as long as our people and our politicians insist on keeping gun ownership legal, I don’t want to hear about it. 

Are we going to actually decide that it’s worth sacrificing what is now practically equal to a human right to bear arms for the good of our nation, or are we going to continue being a people who values its privileges above its principles? And I’m especially talking to you, American Christian who claims to love Jesus yet insists on conflating the Bill of Rights and the Bible. Get your head out of your ass and start actually bringing heaven to earth as we were put here to do. What does that mandate mean to you?

In the words of my uncle during one of his eloquent rants: “Innovate, or shut up.” 

I'm done. 

A eulogy of sorts

My grandfather isn’t dead yet, but when he does die I might not know about it. So I’m grieving him early. 

He has essentially disappeared from my life (his choice), and after a recent and emotional family reunion, I feel the need to eulogize him. 

Death is an interesting thing. It immortalizes those who die young, and it releases the living to be generous with those who die old. After all, people stop disappointing you when they’re dead. It’s easy to be generous.

Beginnings are important, but they don’t live on in people’s memories. Endings do, ironically. And my grandfather didn’t end well. In fact, he isolated himself entirely from his family, he concocted false versions of events in order to justify his irrational actions, and he succumbed to a woman who utterly controlled him to his and all of our detriment. 

Yet, I want to say that my grandfather was a good man. He was a simple man; his routine consisted of watching the Yankees play ball, walking the dog, completing crossword puzzles, and golfing. I remember him as one who spent his retirement years working at the local parish food pantry. Whenever I visited as a kid I’d help him bag food and hand it out to people. He possessed good comedic timing and a jolly laugh. He taught me a dance he learned when he was stationed in Japan during the Korean War. He told me stories of how he knew Grandma was the one the moment he started dancing with her. But that’s how I knew him as a child. 

Becoming an adult is disappointing in that you find out all sorts of things about your relatives that you never knew. They cease to be larger than life and shrink down to regular, dysfunctional size. Family skeletons start making appearances, and middle-aged adult children start confronting what actually happened when they were kids. They begin putting words to their father’s violent outbursts, the verbal aggression, the emotional distance. Unpretty things surface when you start to dig. 

After Grandma died seven years ago, Grandpa opened up emotionally in a way we’d never seen before. But then he met a woman who carries her own baggage so large, there was no longer any room for us. Now my memories are of when he lied to me about having plans to spend Thanksgiving elsewhere the time my father and I flew in from overseas to spend the holiday with him and our family. Or when we met briefly at my great-aunt’s funeral and he told me he’d join us at the family restaurant after the wake. He never showed. Never mind that he has so few opportunities to see his only granddaughter because she lives on a different continent. And those are the least offensive things he did to a member of his family. My brother, aunt, uncle, father and cousin were all treated with less consideration. 

So instead of dedicating this eulogy to him, I’ll dedicate it to his children - three of the most emotionally courageous people I know. My aunt, who never felt her father’s love and bore the brunt of his emotional violence all her life, yet isn’t bitter. My father, who at the age of 58 chose to dig deep and identify the roots of his anxiety, taking him on a humbling journey towards emotional health. My uncle, whose wisdom and integrity get dismissed far too often by people who don’t appreciate what he can bring to the table, yet who continues to walk the line with humor and self-deprecation. Grandpa can’t take credit for how well his kids turned out - their present selves are entirely a product of God’s grace and patient work - but they are what he leaves behind. So. Because he’s gone and we can be generous, we’ll let them be his legacy. His children are doing the emotional work of confronting the past so that his grandchildren can walk uninhibited into the future.

On August 27, 2018, I called to wish him a happy birthday. I wasn't expecting him to pick up as he was never home since meeting 'that woman'. But to my surprise he answered, and when it became clear that I had totally mistaken the date (it was my grandmother's birthday, not his) he chuckled and began talking just like old times. For 30 providential minutes he reverted back to who he used to be to me; he was open and loving and happy. I hung up feeling like God had just given me a gift.

That was the last time we spoke. Since then things have gotten really bad. But I choose to remember him the way he was for those 30 minutes. Because it's a good ending, and it's the one I want to live on in my memory.